Three-Ten to Yuma and Other Stories Read Free Page B

the fire, fascinated, until the flames reached the loft above him and the heat pressed close and smothering.
    For a few minutes he forgot about the Apaches, his mind coping with just one thing at a time, and not relating the fire to the Indians. He was completely fascinated, moving toward the front slowly, reluctant to take his eyes from the dancing flames, until the heat licked close and he turned to find himself at the front entrance.
    Hiding was out of the question. Swept out by the fire and the panic that strapped his mind and made his heart hammer against his chest.
    Panic and no choice.
    It made him throw his shoulder against the heavy swing door and force his body through the narrow opening. He hesitated a long second, then ran to the left, hitting the duckboard sidewalk in four strides, then up the steps of the barroom porch. He hesitated again in the deep shadows of the ramada, glancedback toward the stable grinding his teeth together to keep from crying out, then ran across the porch.
    At the end of the porch he glanced back again, and that was his mistake.
    He turned to break into a run, but the stairs were there and he pitched forward, throwing his arms out in front of him. There was the half-scream and the explosion and that was all. He lay faceup. A thin hole in his chest showed where he had shot himself. And the toes of his issue boots pointed to the red glow that was spreading in the sky.
    Â 
    I T WAS THE same glow that brought Apache and cavalry to meet the next morning on the flat plain east of the town of Helena.
    Cause and effect is natural. Cavalry followed the glow in the night sky for an obvious reason. That was why there was a garrison at Fort Bowie. Chee brought his Mimbres through a mistake in judgment. Fire in the sky to the northeast, the direction of Fort Bowie. And Cochise, with over two hundred Chiricahuas, was on the warpath in that general direction. It was easy for Chee to abandon one ambushed troop for a chance to assist in the sack of a whole garrison.
    An error in judgment and overeagerness. Andwhen Chee discovered his error it was too late. He was in the open. One of Stoneman’s scouts learned this from a Mimbre who survived the battle. The story influenced Stoneman’s reasoning. There is no question of that.
    That afternoon they found Bud Nagle. His gun empty and his body mutilated. The right hand and foot hacked off. There was only one conclusion to be reached.
    At Camp Grant the next week, Stoneman awarded him posthumously the medal that bears Minerva’s head. The Medal of Honor.
    Regimental pride is a strange thing. A soldier will cling to it because it is important, and he will even let it bias his mind. West of the San Andres there was little else but regimental pride.
    Stoneman gave Nagle the Medal of Honor because he had sacrificed his life for his troop. He had fired the town to signal the Bowie garrison, thereby giving his own life. Stoneman even hinted that Nagle signaled with the intention of luring Chee. He did not state it flatly, but moved around it with tactical terms.
    That’s what regimental pride will do. A hero. His name listed forever on the Roll of Honor of B Troop, Third United States Dragoons. And many believed it—even knowing Bud Nagle—Yes, that’s what regimental pride will do.

2
Under the Friar’s Ledge
    S TRUGGLES’ ATTITUDE TOWARD the Sangre del Santo story was one of complete indifference. At the time he first heard the story, he was contract surgeon at Fort Huachuca with no time for chasing lost mine legends. It was common knowledge that Struggles had more than a superficial interest in precious metals—it was evident in the way he wangled assignments to extended patrols and would have his pan out at every water stop, and the leaves on which he went into the Dragoons alone with a pack mule and a shovel—but prospecting, to Struggles, was a world apart from chasing legends. Lost mines were for fools, or anyone